Their very existences contaminate drinking water —
said the self-appointed gatekeepers of tradition
Their shadows are too filthy
to graze the feet of caste-pure scriptures
But when their daughters are stripped naked,
their bodies auctioned,
their flesh carved and fed to wild pigs —
the same society stands and watches with their eyes wide shut
The custodians of caste don’t utter a word, not even a solitary gasp
as if cat got their tongues, and chewed them to the last shreds
No god stands with them
No government claims them,
What they have in their surveiled existences, is a dream of life —
not one smeared in sewage,
but one that asks and demands
to be treated like a human being
God’s pimps wear holy threads
and declare themselves gods of these lesser ones
Remember, even the “father of the nation”
was never the father of the Dalits —
even though seventy percent of the country
breathes through Dalit-Bahujan lungs
Feminist sisters
don’t march for them
Human rights activists
don’t light candles for them
Because discrimination and violence normalised in the name of caste
doesn’t make for deep conversations
over imported single malts and inexpensive cigarettes
Even their own —
once handed a slice of what’s rightfully theirs —
turn their backs
and fall silent
In the end, all that remains
are crushed dreams,
and lives
so grotesquely lived,
they can’t even be called survival
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